Yesterday's Embers (27 page)

If she resented the life he’d trapped her in, she never showed it.

T
he leaves on the trees along the Smoky Hill had started to turn, bright spots of crimson and burnt orange against a patchwork of wheat stubble, rich cultivated ground, and fields of milo ripe for harvest. A more beautiful autumn than Doug could remember, yet with each day he felt himself sinking deeper into a pit of despair.

The anniversary was approaching. Thanksgiving Day would mark a year since he’d lost Kaye and Rachel, and it seemed the closer the day drew, the more he dwelled on the tragedy.

He and Phil Grady had talked about this at length. Over the weeks since he’d begun counseling, his pastor had become a friend. “Anniversaries are hard,” Phil had said last week. “But look at it this way: each day brings you a little closer to the anniversary being
past
—a hurdle crossed.”

It was probably good advice, but somehow he couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible was about to happen. Though how this Thanksgiving could possibly be any more horrible than the last, he couldn’t imagine.

Over and over, alone in his truck or on the tractor, and in his prayer time with Phil, he’d asked God to take away the illogical fear. But sometimes it seemed the harder he prayed, the larger his fear loomed.

Most of his pastor’s counseling had consisted of him allowing Doug to talk about what happened, to relive his marriage, agonize over his regrets. But this afternoon Phil had caught him off guard with a new tack. He’d opened his Bible to the book of Philippians and looked at him hard, not mincing words. “You’ve been in a long season of mourning, Doug, and that’s been necessary and understandable. But I think you’ve come to a point where it’s counterproductive for you to work so hard at mourning, dwell so much on what you’ve lost.”

Phil read a passage, aloud, about not looking only to one’s own interests, but also to the interests of others. “I think,” he told Doug, “that it’s time for you to start consciously moving away from self-centered thoughts. It’s time to cultivate a servant’s heart.”

At first Doug had felt defensive. Wasn’t that why he’d come to Phil for counseling in the first place—because he’d put everyone else’s needs first and not taken the time to grieve properly? The kids, the farm, his job, Harriet, and then Mickey—they’d all kept him from doing the hard work of grieving.

Then the thought rang false inside him, and he acknowledged that it wasn’t true. In his desperation to avoid his grief, he’d allowed himself to be distracted by all those things. But in recent months he hadn’t put anyone but himself first. Not really.

Then Phil read the end of the passage: “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus…who made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant…he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross.”

The words had soaked into him as if he were a thirsty sponge. And in that moment something happened inside him—and he was still trying to process it.

Phil had looked up from his worn Bible. “I’m going to give you an assignment, Doug. This week I want you to make a conscious effort to reach out to other people, to see where they might be hurting, where they could use help. Every time you start thinking about that anniversary, about Kaye and Rachel, I want you to stop and find something, some way—no matter how small—to serve someone else.”

But here he was, not fifteen minutes out of his session with Phil, and he was already back to dwelling on that anniversary date, that fear.

He pulled into the garage, determined to take Phil’s assignment seriously. Maybe one of the kids would need help with their homework. That was something Mickey usually did, since often he wasn’t even home until it was almost bedtime for the kids.

Mickey
. If he thought about it too hard, he would be eaten up with guilt over what he’d done to her.

He hung his jacket in the laundry room on the hook beneath his name. “I’m home,” he announced, stepping into the kitchen.

“Daddy! Daddy’s home!” The twins and Harley scrambled to be first for hugs. Landon was into shoulder punches these days. Doug was happy to oblige them all. He never grew tired of the welcome his children gave him.

“Where’s Kayeleigh?”

Mickey was at the sink scrubbing a skillet. “She’s spending the night with Rudi. I hope that was okay?”

He nodded. “Sure.”

“You’re early,” she said. “Dinner won’t be ready for a little bit.”

“That’s okay.”

“You want something to drink?”

“I’ll get it.” He went to the refrigerator and grabbed a pitcher of iced tea.

“There’s no sugar in that yet.”

“I’m on it.” He pulled the sugar canister from the cupboard and scooped a couple of spoonfuls of sugar into his glass. Mickey didn’t like sugar in her tea.

“Sarah,” Mickey said, “you and Sadie, come and dry these dishes, would you? I need to take the chicken out of the oven. Do you want a salad, Doug?”

He shook his head. “Not tonight, thanks.” If she resented the life he’d trapped her in, she never showed it. They’d grown into a comfortable pattern with each other, talking only about the kids or household matters. Living separate lives in many ways.

Three Sundays a month they went to church together at Community Christian, and the first Sunday of each month Mickey had dinner in Salina with her brothers. She’d given up asking him to go with her a long time ago. He didn’t know what she’d told her brothers and she didn’t offer.

If there was a school activity for one of the kids, he went and she stayed home with the others. They rarely went to anything together, and if they did, the kids served as buffers. He didn’t know what was said about them—about their marriage—around town, but he could imagine. He’d quit caring a long time ago.

But sometimes, like now, watching Mickey at the sink, laughing with the girls, he remembered those first days when he’d thought he was falling in love with her. When they’d taken the kids bowling or to the movies every Sunday afternoon, or sat out on her deck in town and talked.

In an odd way he wished those days back. Under different circumstances, of course, but sometimes he found himself daydreaming that he had only recently met Mickey. How different things might have been had he only given himself a chance to grieve Kaye before jumping into marriage again so quickly. Phil had told him, “In a way it was a compliment to Kaye that you wanted to get married again so soon. Kaye made marriage look like a good deal.”

He understood what Phil was saying, but it didn’t change the fact that he’d made a terrible mistake. And Mickey was paying the highest price for his mistake. How he wished he could change all that. The night he’d confessed to her that he didn’t,
couldn’t
love her the way she hoped, she’d led him to believe she still loved him. But a lot of water had passed under the bridge since then. They’d lived these separate existences for four months now. Yet it seemed like a lifetime. He didn’t know how she felt about him anymore. And part of him was afraid to know.

An emotion swept over him—one he couldn’t quite identify, except that it was a familiar feeling. He felt the way he’d felt as a boy when his parents dropped him off for a week at summer camp.
He was homesick
. Except the cure for homesickness had always been coming home. But he
was
home, and he had the worst case ever—with no idea how or where to find a remedy.

Sighing, he went through to the living room, looking for the newspaper. He rarely had time to read more than the headlines and the weather. Maybe he’d finish it while he waited for dinner.

Mickey’s cat sat in front of the sofa, staring at him.

“What?” he said aloud, as if the cat might actually answer.

“What’d you say, Doug?” Mickey yelled from the kitchen.

“Nothing. I was talking to Sasha.”

Mickey and the girls giggled at that.

He opened the paper and heard Phil’s words in his head:
“Find some way—no matter how small—to serve someone else.”
He looked through to the kitchen where Mickey was working, hustling between the stove and refrigerator and attending to Harley. She’d worked all day at the daycare, yet she came home and made dinner and cared for the kids. She did it all without complaining, cheerfully even. He did his best to help her on the nights he wasn’t working late in the fields, but the truth was, she got the brunt of the housework and the childcare and—

“Ouch!”

Mickey’s cry and the sound of the oven door slamming shut urged him from the sofa. “What happened?”

She stood at the sink, holding her hand under a stream of cold water. He could tell she was trying hard not to cry.

“What happened?”

She winced. “I burned myself…on that stupid oven.”

He leaned over the sink. “Let me see…”

She held up her hand. An angry welt was already starting to blister on the back of her hand.

Without thinking he lifted her damp fingers to his lips and kissed them, the way he might have if she’d been one of the little girls. When he realized what he’d done, his face grew warm and he waited for her to pull her hand away.

But she didn’t. Their eyes met and something—something that frightened him and thrilled him all at once—passed between them. It reminded him of that first time she’d brought the kids home from daycare because he was late, and she’d stayed to eat with them. Except this time there was no guilt for the stirrings inside him. This was his wife.

He inspected the wound. “Looks painful. You should keep water on it for a while.” He reached for a clean dish towel. “Come here…”

Still holding her injured hand, he led her down the hall into the bathroom. He turned on the faucet and tested the temperature, then gently placed her hand under the slow stream of tepid water. She held her hand there while he rummaged in the medicine cabinet for something to put on the broken blister. After a minute of scanning labels and not comprehending anything he read, Mickey reached around him with her other hand.

“Here, try this.” She shut the door to the cabinet.

As she held out the brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide, he caught her reflection in the mirror. She was watching him with bemused curiosity. “Um…didn’t you used to be an EMT?” Her grin came into
full bloom, her eyes alight with a sparkle he remembered from a long time ago.

He took the bottle from her, and uncapped it, feeling clumsy and inept. “Apparently I am seriously out of practice. Here…give me your hand.”

Their eyes met again in the mirror, and her expression turned serious. “Thanks.”

She looked away and he carefully patted her hand dry around the burn, then assessed the damage. “Well, I have good news and bad news.”

“Oh?”

“The good news is, I think you’ll live.”

“Whew, that’s a relief. And, um…the bad news?”

He held her hand over the sink and tipped the bottle. “This is gonna sting like crazy.”

She winced in anticipation. “Oh…ouchie, owie…owie!” But the tremulous, unmistakable smile in her eyes let him hope that she was feeling something beyond the pain. That she was feeling the same stirrings as he was inside.

He blew across her hand in short little breaths, and for a reason he didn’t quite comprehend, with every breath his spirits lifted. Higher and higher…until he thought he might float right up to the ceiling.

This was something different, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. And it worried her.

M
ickey wiped off perfectly clean kitchen counters, feeling a little guilty for eavesdropping on Doug’s conversation—even though he made no effort to keep his voice down.

“Okay, sure. See you then. Thanks, Harriet.” He hung up the phone and looked at her. “Harriet wants the kids for the whole weekend. You okay with that?”

“Sure.” Kaye’s mother came from Florida every few months, staying at her sister’s house in Salina. Doug always arranged for her to see the kids as much as possible whenever she was in Kansas. But it was unusual for him to ask Mickey’s permission about plans.

“You’ll be with your brothers Sunday, right?”

She nodded. Something was up.

“I wondered…” He dipped his head
before looking her in the eye. “Would you have any interest in having me…come with you this time?”

Despite how well she and Doug had been getting along over the past few months, she’d long ago given up on the DeVore family ever blending with her extended family. She couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. “I—I’d love it if you came.”

He bit the corner of his lip. “Yes, but would your brothers love it?”

She grinned. “Probably not as much as I would. But I don’t think they’ll kick you out or anything.” She hesitated for a minute. “Do I dare ask…why this sudden change of heart?”

He shrugged. “I’ve…been thinking.”

“About?”

A faraway look came to his eyes. “A lot of things.”

“Okay…” Thanksgiving, the anniversary of Kaye and Rachel’s deaths, had been a turning point for her and Doug. Even before that, really. But after that anniversary passed, they somehow found their way back to the friendship they’d begun at the start, and each day she felt a tiny bit closer to him than she had the day before.

But for several days now, he’d seemed a little down—or
something
. Sometimes Harriet’s visits sent him into a slump. But she didn’t think that was what was bothering him this time. This was something different, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. And it worried her. “Is…is everything okay?”

He took a deep breath. “Mickey, I’d like to talk to you…about…some things.”

She nodded and tried to smile, but a strange fear took hold of her, and a hundred possibilities—none of them pleasant—roamed through her mind, trying to take root.

“I told Harriet I’d bring the kids into town in time to have supper with her and Aunt Bess. How about I bring us home something to eat after I drop them off?”

“Sure.” She forced a laugh. “You know me—I never turn down a chance to get out of the kitchen.”

His shoulders lifted and he brightened. “Okay. I’ve got dinner covered.” He glanced out the kitchen window. “Maybe we can eat outside?”

She followed his gaze to a perfect blue sky. “If it doesn’t cool off too quick, that’d be lovely.”

A
t six o’clock Mickey heard the garage door. Feeling strangely nervous, she ran to check her hair in the laundry room mirror. She so rarely spent time alone with Doug.

Oh, Father, please help this weekend to go well. Please help us just to enjoy each other, and to grow closer—to each other, and to You
.

These little prayers throughout the day had become as natural to her as breathing. As Doug had continued to meet with Pastor Grady, he’d begun to pray with her and the kids. Not only at mealtimes, but before the kids went to bed each night. His were simple prayers, but they touched her deeply and compelled her to cultivate her own closer relationship with God.

Doug held up an Arby’s bag. “I got your favorite. And the weather’s perfect. It hit sixty-five this afternoon. I vote for that picnic.”

“Okay.” She grabbed bottles of water from the fridge and went for a jacket and the picnic blanket.

He spread it on the ground, and they ate in silence, enjoying the songbirds and the warmth of the fading sun on their backs.

“You have this place looking really nice, Mick,” he said over a mouthful of roast beef.

Mickey followed his gaze around the corner of the backyard she’d claimed as her garden. A few things, the phlox and gaura, were just
beginning to come up—enough that she could be sure at least some of her transplants had taken. But she knew it wasn’t the plants themselves Doug was referring to.

Right now the framework of the garden was all that was visible: the hill of rocks she’d arranged for the sedum to climb, the arbor she hoped would someday burgeon with roses, the brick pathway Doug and the kids had helped her lay. Those were the only things the garden had to boast right now. And yet, viewed through the hope of spring, they had their own beauty.

“It’ll be real pretty this summer,” he said, as if he’d read her mind.

As the sun slunk below the horizon, a gentle breeze came through. Mickey shivered and pulled one corner of the picnic blanket over her legs.

“You cold?”

“A little. I’m fine.”

“You want to go in?”

She shook her head. “I’m enjoying this.”

“Hang on.” He jumped up. “I’ll be right back.”

A minute later he came back with one of the old quilts they kept in the Suburban in case of a winter emergency—or a summer picnic. “Here.” He stood behind her and she felt the quilt settle down around her shoulders.

“Mmm…that feels good. Thanks.”

The sun disappeared, leaving a haze of pale blue in the west. In the distance crickets started a slow
chirrup chirrup chirrup
.

Doug cocked his head and listened for a minute. “It’s still almost fifty degrees.”

She wrinkled her brow. “How do you know that?”

“Crickets.”

“Huh?”

“If you count the chirps, you’ll know the temperature.”

“No way.”

“You didn’t know that?”

“You’re putting me on.” All of a sudden she remembered the date on the calendar. “This is an April Fool’s joke, right?”

He laughed. “No, I’m serious. You apparently don’t read the
Farmer’s Almanac.”

“No, but I read
National Geographic
, and I sure don’t remember ever hearing anything about crickets telling the temperature.” She tilted her head like he had and listened. All she heard was one undulating drone. She narrowed her eyes. “Okay, I give. How do you count cricket chirps?”

“Listen again.” He held up a finger and mouthed a count.
One, two, three, four, five…

She nodded. Watching him count, she could sort of separate them out.

“Okay, now,” he said. “You count to fourteen—silently, to yourself—and I’ll count the chirps.”

They locked eyes while she counted under her breath and he held up fingers for each chirp. “…six, seven, eight—”

She held up a hand when she hit fourteen. “Time’s up.”

“It’s forty-eight degrees.” He bobbed his head as if that settled it.

She shot him a skeptical look. “How did you get forty-eight degrees out of that?”

He wiggled his eyebrows. “You have to know the secret formula.”

“And that would be?”

“Count the chirps in fourteen seconds and add forty.”

She shed the quilt, jumped up, and ran over to the other side of the rose arbor where she’d nailed up a thermometer. “Forty-eight, on the money. That is so cool!”

He laughed and puffed out his chest.

She came back and sat cross-legged on the blanket.

“You want this?” He gestured to the quilt.

“Please.” He shook it out and wrapped it back around her shoulders, making her think of the way he snugged Harley into her little hoodies.

She hated to spoil the moment, but her curiosity was getting the better of her. “You said you wanted to talk to me about something.”

He looked thoughtful, and for a minute she was afraid he was going to say “never mind.”

Instead, he got up and knelt in front of her on the blanket. Closing his eyes, as if he were about to dive into icy water, he reached for her hands.

She melted at the warmth of his touch.

For a full minute he sat that way, stroking her hands with his thumbs. She looked at him, wondering where this was going, and realized that he was struggling to control his emotions.

“Doug? What’s wrong?”

He inhaled and breathed out her name. “This is going to sound a little funny…Mrs. DeVore.” He grinned, suddenly seeming himself again. “But I wanted—I’ve wanted for a long time—to ask you to marry me.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but words wouldn’t come. Tears did, though, like a geyser. She fanned a hand in front of her face, trying to quell the sobs. She didn’t know if she was crying from relief, or love, or sheer joy.

Doug moved to wrap her in his arms.

Except in her dreams, it had been nearly a year since he’d held her this way. But oh, it felt exactly the way she remembered.

He pulled back slightly and put a hand under her chin. “Hey, hey…that wasn’t supposed to make you
cry
. What’s wrong?”

“Oh, Doug.” Now she laughed through her tears.

He held her and patted her back through the quilt. “You okay?” Genuine concern softened his voice.

She nodded. “I’m crying because I’m happy.”

“You
sure
?”

She nodded again. “I’ve never been so sure about anything in my life.”

He eased down on the blanket and pulled her beside him, squeezing
her close. “I want to do it right this time, Mickey. I want you to have that big church wedding and that big white dress you always wanted.”

His words touched her in a place so deep it was painful. But she shook her head. She knew what she wanted. And it wasn’t the things he thought.

“Doug…oh, you’re so sweet to offer that. A year ago I would have jumped all over that. But not anymore. I think the time has passed for that.”

His arm dropped from her shoulder, and she realized he’d misunderstood.

She laughed softly and moved his arm back around her shoulder. “Hear me out. I want—I want the groom. Oh, do I ever want the groom.”

She reached up and cradled his stubbled cheek in her palm.
Her husband
. The tears came again. “But I don’t need all that other stuff anymore—the dress, the fancy wedding—I have what really matters. Everything that’s truly important.”

He turned his head until his lips touched her fingertips. “Is that a yes?”

She nodded, smiling until her face hurt.

“I love you, Michaela DeVore. I’ve been loving you for a while now. I don’t know if you noticed.”

“I was starting to suspect.” She pulled away and drank in the boyish grin he gave her.

“The only thing I could ever want for now is—” She hesitated, feeling suddenly shy.

“What?” The longing in his eyes—still laced with a fair bit of mischief—told her that he was hoping she’d say exactly what she was about to say.

“As long as we’re already married…?”

He hung on her words. “Yes?”

“I’m lonely. At night. I miss…having you in my bed. Do you
think we could…eventually…work our way back to that part of marriage?”

He drew back and narrowed his eyes. But he couldn’t hide the gleam in them. “This isn’t an April Fool’s joke, is it?”

She mirrored his expression. “Would I joke about something like that?”

In answer, a thousand crickets began a cheerful
chirrup chirrup chirrup
.